%0 Journal Article
%T Pledging to harm: A linguistic appraisal analysis of judgment comparing realized and non
%A Marlon Hurt
%A Tim Grant
%J Discourse & Society
%@ 1460-3624
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0957926518816195
%X Intent is a psychological quality that threat assessors view as a required step on a threatener¡¯s pathway to action. Recognizing the presence of intent in threatening language is therefore crucial to determining whether a threat is credible. Nevertheless, a ¡®lack of empirical guidance¡¯ (p. 326) is available concerning how violent intent is expressed linguistically. Using the subsystem of judgment in Appraisal analysis, this study compares realized with non-realized ¡®pledges to harm¡¯, revealing occasionally counterintuitive patterns of stancetaking by both author types ¨C for example, that the non-realized texts are both prosodically more violent and more threatening, while the realized pledges are more ethically nuanced ¨C which may begin to shed light on which attitudinal markers reliably correlate with an author¡¯s intention to do future harm
%K American English
%K Appraisal analysis
%K capacity
%K forensic linguistics
%K intent
%K judgment
%K pledge to harm
%K propriety
%K stance
%K threat assessment
%K United States
%K violent fantasy
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0957926518816195